traces of what once was

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I haven't been a frequent poster here, nor overly political in my writing. I have a permanent paid LJ account, so I will likely keep it and may contribute to it at times. However, since I do not appreciate the new terms of service which make LJ no longer welcoming to everyone, I will more likely post to Dreamwidth. While I do not feel personally at risk posting to LJ, I prefer to be part of a more inclusive community, so I am joining my friends who have migrated elsewhere.

LJ accounts which had access to view my friends only posts here have been given access to view my Dreamwidth posts as well. My username there is different, however.

That service seems more secure overall, and certainly more welcoming. You can import a LiveJournal account to Dreamwidth fairly easily. Though the queue was quite large earlier this month, it's much shorter now. I hope to see some of you there.

I've lived very close to a small airport for several years now. We either walk or drive up the street, turn, and look for a place to park if going there. I still do a double-take every single time I hear engines overhead cut off on a small plane coming in for a landing. Rarely do they sputter much. My house is not directly in the normal flight path and would likely be unaffected by any incidents.

I suspect pilots get used to it pretty quick, that sudden silence. It's a normal thing and does not signify a problem. Planes can glide quite a ways and be landed safely; it happens quite frequently.

Yet it triggers an alarm in my head when an engine stops. I blame TV. Perhaps I was exposed to the Airport '7x series of films at an impressionable age. Maybe it's partially because I knew a pilot who went down and perished while flying for Mission Aviation Fellowship. I don't know why, yet I find it amusing that I have an instinctual negative reaction to a functional sound despite what is surely frequent exposure to it being perfectly normal.

Clearly Dirk in the userpic doesn't quite have it right when it comes to affirming interest and consent before getting physical. I'm sharing this article that made the Facebook rounds as well as my thoughts here so I'll be able to reference it more easily in the future.

Women can and should ask for consent as well. While a typical man may be thrilled if a woman drapes herself around him, hugs him intimately, pets him, and takes away all the guess work of what she wants it is still incredibly hot as well as courteous to verbally affirm consent first and prevents a double standard. I see it as a form of respect, and wish everyone gave that to my partners as well as me. I don't think unannounced prolonged hugs pressing yourself against an acquaintance should be considered acceptable for either gender. I find it a reprehensible hypocrisy that there are so many women who would react with anger and even violence if a man came up and pressed himself into one of them yet think nothing of taking the same exact action themselves. I get that it works and many guys don't mind, yet it is a double standard.

Being largely written about a woman's experience, the article has some natural gender bias. I've had numerous partners who have been blindsided by assertive women who never asked. "It just happened...." It saddens me both that the men craved the attention so much they didn't care about the lack of respect and that the women think it's okay because he liked it. Gender reversed rape culture; it exists.

I appreciate that the article makes it clear that progressive consent is also appropriate. Having mutual interest and agreeing to date someone doesn't have to mean sex or other intimate play at any point, either.

Maybe it's mostly an ASD thing, yet not everyone catches and properly interprets visual and physical clues. Verbal confirmation that it's all good doesn't have to slow things down (unless there is uncertainty in which case slowing down is good), and in some cases it can speed things up nicely. Asking by gestures still puts pressure on someone; I like the focus on affirming interest by verbally expressing your own and giving the other person room to respond however they wish without it being a direct rejection.

My favorite comments when I posted this on Facebook were from Jonah who shared "I don't have time to read the article right now, but yes. I love clear communication, and that happens best within consent rather than wordless action. These can be combined beautifully, as in my favorite personal example: I asked to kiss her, and she responded by passionately kissing me first. Not tons of talking, but clear communication by both parties" and then "Now that I think of it, if I had just waited instead of asking I hope that she would have asked me instead of just kissing me." He later read the article itself and appreciated it as well.

It was given to me years ago by my Grandmother Ruth, probably sometime in the 1980s. It's not much to look at, yet it's held up well and been a serviceable home to a number of plants over the years. It was fairly old when she gave it to me. That speaks to her ability to see the high value inherent in what others would look past in favor of something more decorated, and how we learned not only that yet how to care for things. Sometimes I wonder how many other pots from its maker are still in existence and used. Sometimes I wonder if part of why it is still intact is because it has been cared for and cherished. Despite a plain appearance, it has had a colorful life in several homes. She gifted it to me before moving to the last apartment she had of her own, and that's when she told me of how she got it.

My grandmother grew up in Lancaster county Pennsylvania and had two older brothers and an older sister named Esther. My grandmother was of similar stature to me, which is to say short, and she and her taller sister Esther had very different personalities as well as appearances. She never really felt that she measured up to Esther and had numerous instances of being disfavored in one way or another. Though a sometimes unkind older sibling, Esther regularly made choices mostly in keeping with their mother's interests up to and including becoming a preacher's wife. My grandmother ended up moving away at 18, shortly before the start of the Great Depression, and eventually eloped with a handsome yet soft spoken chemist with a charming Irish brogue (or so I'm told; I never got to meet him). Suffice to say, she spent much of her life with an appreciation for the value of common and even unlovely things, in addition to enjoying things of beauty.

One day as a young girl my grandmother noticed the pot amongst other things for sale and mentioned it to her mother as something she'd like to have. My great grandmother told the person who had it that her daughter was interested in it and was told "Well, if Esther likes it she can have it." When my great grandmother clarified that it wasn't Esther who had the interest, the reply was "Oh. Well, ten cents then." Ten cents wasn't cheap around a hundred years ago when this transpired, yet was fair enough that it was somewhat grudgingly purchased for Ruth. Some comment was made that she was worth it. There was a stronger message in there for her about how others valued her, and she made a point of telling me that I was of much higher value than a ten cent pot when she gave it to me.

There is nothing readily remarkable about the pot itself. It isn't perfectly smooth and the glazing seems to have worn off in a couple of places. There is no maker's mark to link it to someone famous. It's a pot that holds dirt well. It's durable. It fills its purpose and does not compete for beauty with anything that grows within it. The person who sold it was willing to give it away yet wanted to get as much as possible under the circumstances; I somewhat doubt if I could even get a dollar for it at a yard sale now. It's not for sale though, because it is a worthy pot and I am proud to have it.

Who's that little dog over there? That's Maggie. She's our foster dog. Yes, we still have our other dog. No, we're not going to adopt Maggie even though she's incredibly sweet and adorable. We're going to take care of her until she gets to go to a new home that will take care of her for the rest of her life. Why did we decide to foster dogs? Well, they need help that we can give and we love dogs. Where did she come from? Well, that's a whole other story. I don't know the whole story, either. Yet I'm going to talk about the parts I don't know so you can understand more about why dogs need to be rescued and fostered, and how that happens. Hopefully you'll appreciate that it takes a lot of people, mostly volunteers, to help a dog like Maggie get from a bad situation to a great one.

Oyster mushrooms grown from a discounted Back to the Roots kit were very tasty. I haven't figured out how to propogate them further, yet may look into growing them again or another kind of mushroom. I liked that the kit was a somewhat sustainable product of mushroom matter feeding on used coffee grounds; all I had to do was give it water for a couple of weeks.

I can rant away. Those solo and/or bitter may find it amusing. Those not solo who might take offense are likely too distracted to notice or care. A fair number of fine folks won't get past the first paragraph of dry boring sentences anyway; it's history.

1. Who was St. Valentine and why should anybody celebrate love on his special day? There is no definitive answer to the first part as it was a popular name; could have been any of several guys. The day seems to have become popular because of Chaucer. Perhaps it was an "any excuse for a party" thing or another Christian attempt to abscond with a pagan celebratory day. The legend/myth of St Valentine, which seems to have been propagated most by greeting card manufacturers, tells of a man who was jailed for marrying people against the law because a ruler wanted men to be single so they would be better soldiers. This wrongfully jailed priest allegedly may have healed and/or fallen in love with the blind daughter of his jailer and written her a note on the eve of his death signed "Your Valentine." Hey, great reason to send little greetings. So, if you want to stay true to the spirit of the day, write somebody who is incarcerated and on death row, and with whom you'll likely never be able to live happily ever after. Go, go unrequitable affection! & letter writing! Though there are people I love dearly, I don't really want to be anyone's Valentine. Seriously, I'd rather share a long life with someone I love. Applications for that sort of thing are still being accepted.

2. What's up with the heart shape? That thing beating in the chest doesn't look like that unless it's an abstract interpretation. What does? A set of buttcheeks. Yep. <3 Such lovely shades of pink and red, too. However do they get to be those colors?

3. Why the heck does cupid shoot arrows? Frankly, I don't need any naked puti shooting at me with enchanted magical arrows, and if one does, I'd rather they miss the heart entirely. Shooting one through my buttcheeks as indicated on so many cards might get me a sympathy date, though, so I guess that might work okay if I can keep my rampant cynicism in check while experiencing that much butthurt.

To summarize this little rant:

Have fun celebrating in honor of tragic love tales concocted for commercial reasons. Enjoy being bombarded by images of rosy buttcheeks, possibly pierced by pointy puti projectiles. Try not to feel too duped by all the hype and commerce; it's tradition now. It's fine if you're into that sort of thing, yet please don't feel left out if you don't happen to have your own incarcerated penpal to write or email a scanned picture of your photocopied butt.

& yes, puti is the correct term for those scantily-if-clad winged fairy-cherubs those Italian Renn guys painted and sculpted. It's pronounced, coincidentally enough, like pootie/pooty.

I'm not entirely sure why it's in my mind right now, yet I'm going to share the advice my father gave me shortly before my intended wedding date in 1990. It's memorable in part because my dad wasn't big on discussing things of an emotional nature and has rarely given advice before or since then (his initial response about the marriage was "I don't think that's a good idea" yet he was supportive nonetheless.

Days before the date I discovered something about my intended spouse that shocked me. It offended me, even. The specifics of it aren't actually very important. What mattered was that I felt somewhat betrayed, as though anything that important should have been shared much earlier. Yes, it would affect me negatively and set a different tone for our life together. Just knowing that our values and perceptions were different in a key area where many couples have conflicts would have been helpful to know. It's true that I was 18 and ignorant of many things and should have had better counsel and/or asked questions about such things before agreeing to marry. Yet when I told my often-critical father about it, knowing his views and values were much like my own in the matter, he did not point out my naivety nor focus on my intended's flaws. He started by asking a couple of questions.

"Do you still love him?" "Do you still want to marry him and live with him for the rest of your life?"

The answer to all of that was yes.

"Then you accept it as part of who he is and you find ways to make it work."

So I did. It's true that the marriage did not last. Yet the reasons for its demise had little to do with that particular matter. It didn't help, yet it was something I could accept, work with, and eventually help turn to something positive for both of us.

Nobody's perfect and sometimes it's simply better to choose happiness over being "right"; you won't always be both.

I have downsized my LJ friend's list by more than half. No offense was intended towards any of those who were removed. Most of those who were removed have not posted anything to their own journals in months if not years, were people who have rarely if ever commented to my journal, and those who have other means of hearing about my life or contacting me (though rarely do). Those who remain are likely people whose posts I enjoy reading, people who have been supportive of me through LJ, and/or people I do not have other means of interacting with.

If you're reading this and feel some level of disappointment at discovering that you are no longer on my friends list, please email or otherwise message me with some reasoning as to why you'd like to still be on it. It's possible I was too enthusiastic with my trimming in some cases.

I might begin making more public posts, so you may wish to keep me on your lists to more conveniently read those.

I suspect the rash between my fingers that isn't as bad yet hasn't completely gone away in two weeks wasn't caused by poison ivy despite similarities to it. Upon spending more time in the area where I'd been moving things in the backyard sans gloves I discovered a large number of cocoons that seem to have black hairs/spines woven into them. They look just like the spines featured on the toxic white and black fuzzy caterpillars that showed up this summer. The ones that can cause a poison-ivy like rash if contacted. I'm thinking I should wear some gloves and destroy as many of those as I can find before they open in the Spring.

Having experienced restricted access to water and a need to boil it for safety in the past, I hope for a quick resolution for those affected by the water leak affecting Boston and many nearby communities.

I don't know why, but this morning I miss Larry Swedis. So what if he passed away over 6 years ago, he's still fondly remembered. I miss his generosity of time and spirit. I miss talking with him and hearing straightforward honesty. I would have liked to hear his opinion on the current state of unemployment throughout the country and Massachusetts specifically. I miss seeing his creativity spring forth at larp games and mow over things that stood against it - I would have liked to see a collaborative module from him and melamitra as both of them have conceived and implemented the kind written into legend and shared as war stories for years. I wish he had been around for certain other friends he deeply cared about, especially during trials over the past couple of years. Our world remains lessened by his corporeal absence.

I won't pretend or omit that our relationship lacks issues, we've got plenty. What is truly remarkable in it is that we are both learning to set aside pride, anger, and resentment for sake of resolving things. We have both been willing to compromise at times, and continue to be willing to discuss things to better our understanding of each other and our own needs. We acknowledge that though each of us may be more knowledgeable or skilled in some areas, we also each have insight and wisdom to share with each other. Sometimes it is incredibly difficult to listen, and to set aside a desire for being right for sake of being happy. Yet we're committed to learning and improving, and together by continual mutual choice. It's a marvelous experience to share in such a partnership.

Despite many stressful circumstances in my life right now, there is also happiness.

I have bills that are challenging to manage. I'm self-employed. I don't have any health insurance coverage for myself because due to assets, mostly in the form of a diminishing 10 year old 401K plan, I do not qualify for any state programs to get coverage. Since I have no other insurance coverage for my son I am allowed to pay a reasonably small sum to get coverage for him. I have to pay out-of-pocket for any medical care, yet for the <8 months that has been the case the expenses have been far less than the cost of private health insurance would have been. I am within a few thousand dollars of the low-income threshold that would allow us free care at our local hospital yet I continue to work and pay for what I can. I don't like to make more work for anyone else and I believe in taking personal responsibility for my actions.

Overall I am severely disappointed by both the lack of a public option and the choice to force all of us to pay into a private plan. I've chosen to buy fuel-efficient vehicles for the past 20 years, too, and see this sort of legislation as yet another way in which our government is giving our money to systems and companies that profit at our expense. I also have misgivings about ways in which this could lead to requirements in treatments whether they be vaccinations or other forms of compliance that might conflict with one's personal beliefs and choices.

I didn't hear the first part of what he said, yet caught the "...it's really bothering me!" I sympathetically asked what was bothering him."Your cat!""Uhm, what's she doing?""She's ignoring me!"[suppressed laughter] "Yeah, that's something cats do."

Conjunctivitis, that is. So annoying, again. It cleared up for a few days, then resumed. I fastidiously kept washing pillowcases, etc, to prevent reinfection, too. Now I wake up in the middle of the night with burning eye pain and goopy discharge, apply compresses on and off for hours, and they are clear for most of the day yet pink by evening. So though I'm quite uncomfortable now, by the time I could see a doctor they will likely be free of pink yet irritated and my vision will still be blurry -and still no health insurance so I may pay out of pocket for someone to say the eyes look ok. Grrr.

ETA:Though it's a very low probability of actual damage to an eye from the likely cause of the infection I did set an appt for this morning to have it checked out. Two weeks of recurring touch and go symptoms is too long. I'd describe in-depth the wonkiness in my head resulting from my weaker eye finding itself stronger and playing dominant, but olivine_sidhe is probably the only one who would understand.

Go here for more information on how you could possibly get an ARC of Fortune's Folly from the author herself.

This seems a great way to get the word out about her book as well as a way to possibly get an advanced copy. I haven't read it; I'm guessing that it is fabulous based on how much I'd enjoyed other things that Deva has written.

Do, if for no other reason than because the cute baby groundhog would want you to do so. Groundhogs know a little something about telling the future, too.